September/October 2014

Article Excerpts

Welcome to our September/October 2014 issue; As is normally the case at summer’s unofficial end, we’ve put together this issue at a time when most shows that’ll be on view this fall have yet to be installed, and we’ve had to be creative in how to preview the exhibitions we wished to spotlight. That can mean writers get the opportunity to visit artists in their workspaces so they can see the work before it’s shipped to a gallery or museum; ...

Cecil Touchon fits into a lot of categories, but would you expect anything else from the founder of the International Museum of Collage, Assemblage and Construction, who spent the early part of his career as a member of Fluxus in New York City? Three works from his “Post Dogmatist Painting” series will be on view in September at Lanoue Fine Art, 450 Harrison Ave. #31, Boston. Artscope managing editor Brian Goslow “Cornered” Touchon by phone at his studio in his ...

ALICE O'NEILL, COLGATE SEARLE AND DAN O'NEILL GROW UP As an attention grab for audiences visiting Jamestown Arts Center in late summer and early fall, a glowing neon glyph set in low relief will greet them just inside the door. Reminiscent of the emblem of a super- hero’s belt or a computer command key, this stylized cloverleaf by Colgate Metcalf Searle III invites entry into the unique three-person exhibition “Second Home.” The show includes neon/mixed-media sculptures by Searle, artworks by ...

DIVERSE METHODS FIND A COMMON THREAD The traveling “Fiberart International 2013,” exhibition is organized to be a benchmark presentation in the field of contem- porary textile/fiber art. Jury member and multimedia artist Joyce J. Scott explained her selection criteria: “I am searching for an inner depth that differentiates art from its hobbyist and commercial cousins.” The exhibition, currently on view at the American Textile History Museum, is arranged in two galleries in the lower and upper temporary gallery spaces.” Here’s ...

ENCAUSTIC ARTISTS CHALLENGE BOUNDARIES Life is about transformation, change, transition, growth. Art, as a component of life, also follows that path. At its most fundamental level, art-making is always about trans- formation — the transformation of raw materials into a finished work, the transformation from concept to concrete result, the personal transfor- mation of the artist during the creative process. And once completed, nothing is ever the same. The work is unique, new and a result of minute, incremental changes; ...

THE MONSTER WITHIN We all feel a sense of isolation at times, wandering crowded streets full of people disconnected from their surroundings, plugged into their electronics, eyes glued to screens glowing with a cold light. Sammy Chong captures the isolation of people in their everyday lives, in both his series of “Asterion” graphite drawings and layered Plexiglas scenes in which we are separated from those around us either by society or by our own minds. Both are on display this ...

ROZ CHAST SHOWS HER CRAFTY SIDE Artist Roz Chast has long been a master at probing the subterranean landscape of family life, whether charting the anxiety passed on to children unwittingly by their parents (see her marvelous “Wheel of Doom”) or the insights children have without sharing them with their parents (culled from her “Big Book of What I Really Believe”). Her sympathies clearly lie with all the imper- fect characters she has blessed us with for more than 30 ...

CREATING WITH A STRONG YET SUBTLE VOICE Influence, like conjuring, is hard to measure, but we try, since art history without connections would present a falsely static picture of a lone figure pocketed in his or her own vacuum. So, I find myself in sculptor Ruth Rosner’s studio/apartment at treetop level over Brookline’s bustling Beacon Street, wondering from where she received that first complex imperative to “Go figure!” I’m feeling this imperative from the throats of multiple personae — women’s ...

TRACING THE IMPACT OF COLONIALISM AND TECHNOLOGY ON SOUTHEAST ASIAN CULTURE With a specific curatorial theme that challenges art enthusiasts to reflect on Southeast Asian societal issues that transcend the historic, long, bloody Vietnam War to further back in its French colonial days, “Far from Indochine” intends to spark a lively discourse on imperialism’s impact on current-day themes in art and life originating from that region. The 19th Century French colonialism of Southeast Asia wrought havoc on the entire region, ...

NORTH BENNINGTON IS TRANSFORMED INTO AN OUTDOOR SCULPTURE PARK “We’re going on an art hunt — you can model with the sculptures and I’ll send the pictures to the editor!” is how I enticed the kids away from video games to see this exhibition. It worked! After arriving in North Bennington, Vermont and engaging in a fact-finding session of sculpture location and photo documentation, I met up with the very straightforward and welcoming sculptor and exhibition organizer Joe Chirchirillo. Later, ...

MURRAY EXPLORES NEW DIMENSIONS Against a scratched and striated, formless blushed blue backdrop, a portal gapes. Bubbles emanate from its black depths, and cascading out of it — yet still intricately linked with it — is a mass of both defined and ghostly shapes, shifting, morphing, blending into one another. Is it the inner landscape of the mind? Alien? Celestial? A depth of the sea or the core of the earth never plumbed? Entitled “Out of the Abyss Came Sweet- ...

SCULPTURE EMBRACES HORTICULTURE A trend among stately mansions from the past — many of which are now museum-like non-profit institutions — is the idea of boosting tourist interest through the presentation of site-sensitive art. Allison Newsome is a defining force in developing this type of outreach into genuinely interesting events. Her sophisticated perspective is very much in evidence with “Sculpture Embraces Horticulture,” a group show of seven artists (including herself) organized for the Blithewold Mansion, Gardens and Arboretum in Bristol, ...

EXPLORING THAT HARD-TO-DEFINE PLACE Three very different artists bring artwork of great power and strangeness to the three exhibition spaces at AVA Gallery as they explore questions of the body, narrative and that hard-to-define place between realism and abstrac- tion. I was drawn to this group of shows because of that hard-to-define place, through which I travel in my own work. AVA Gallery and Art Center is a non-profit space offering exhibitions, classes and artists’ studios. AVA’s physical structure, with ...

MIA BROWNELL MIXES ART AND SCIENCE AT HOUSATONIC In the still-life paintings of the 16th and 17th centuries, memento mori motifs — “remember you will die” — often appear. The works might portray a sumptuous table laden “with luscious fruits, gleaming oysters, wine poured into thin crystal; it may also be seen to display a melon split and rotting, scavenging mice, invading insects — all rendered with delicate precision,” Carolyn Korsmeyer, a professor of philosophy at SUNY-Buffalo, has written. “Spilled ...

FINDING CONNECTIONS AT LESLEY Japanese artist Rinko Kawauchi feels connections. Connections to and between the personal and the universal. Connections between heaven and earth. Ying and Yang. The living and the dead. In her upcoming exhibit, “Ametsuchi,” at Lesley University, Kawauchi’s series of large-scale photography pulls together and illuminates images of these connec- tions. The night sky over Tokyo, images of people who seem to be consumed by their landscape, and the controlled agricultural burnings (yakihata) of farmland figure prominently ...

AUSTRALIA'S OUTER REACHES IN BLACK AND WHITE On the other side of the world on a tiny remote island, David Edgar finds inspiration. Seven of his large-format charcoal drawings will be included in a two-month exhibition at Jodi Robbins’ Cambridge furniture studio, newly christened as Half Crown Design. Edgar lives, works and plays tennis in Tasmania. Each year, armed with his video and still camera, he makes a foray out to the remarkable, minus- cule Tasman Island. The island is ...

THE COUNTRY'S OLDEST ARTS COLONY CONTINUES TO INSPIRE Twenty-three miles east of the Cape Cod Canal, on a natural spiral of sand, sits the oldest continuous arts colony in the United States. Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod, Mass., is drenched in oceanic light that is a painter’s paradise. Artists began to discover its beauty in 1873 after expanded rail service brought them to an unspoiled fishing village. It was painter and teacher Charles Hawthorne (1872-1930) who attracted thousands ...

TRAILBLAZER KARL KNATHS A brilliant retrospective of 20 stunning masterworks by modernist pioneer Karl Knaths is part of the centennial celebration at the Provinc- etown Art Association and Museum. Curated by Donald Beal, Robert Dutoit and John Frishkopf, this beautiful selection of paintings, on loan from private collectors and lending museums, spans from 1927 to 1970. Born at the end of the 19th century (1891) in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Karl Knaths attended the Chicago Institute of Art in 1912. Working ...

A CABINET OF CURIOSITIES Boston filmmaker Bryan Papciak and Collision Works founder Shel Kimen develop Seafoam Palace: A Museum of Curiosity in Detroit. When Seafoam Palace opens in a decaying historical office building on Detroit’s east side in late 2015, Boston filmmaker Bryan Papciak will be an important engine behind this updated Renaissance “Wunderkammer,” or cabinet of curiosities. The museum’s orchestration of urban detritus, art and interactive installations grows from a collaboration of a score of artists united by curiosity ...

Tom Paiement’s eighth solo exhibition at Portland’s Greenhut Galleries, “Ongoing Explorations,” originated during several weeks spent drawing at and around the Venice Beach boardwalk in February, 2014. “It was inspiring in its energy. I liked the blocky shapes and intricate overlays of the boardwalk stores and buildings against the broad colors of the sky, beach, grass and ocean,” he said. “They became my basic forms, palette and horizontal platform.” A month in Merida, Mexico in March of this year deepened ...